12 ECONOMIC BOTANY AND THE NEW FLOKAS 



immensely valuable, both for their own sakes and as showing 

 him that correspondents are not mere lookers on. 



At the end of the next month, the Mauritian Herbarium 

 was to go back, as soon as the assistant had revised the lists : 



He tells me that he catalogued them all, took out specimens 

 of all that were wanting with us and kept corresponding num- 

 bers, so that any query arising in Mauritius can be answered 

 at once by a reference to us. These collections should be 

 deposited at the Bot: Garden; where alone they can be made 

 useful, and to which establishment they are essential. 



But Sir Henry was disappointed and dissatisfied with the 

 Herbarium when it reached Mauritius. He had expected an 

 entire critical revision of its contents. Hooker had to explain 

 that this was a much vaster work than either Sir Henry imagined 

 or Kew in reality had time or means to undertake. The simple 

 collation of the materials with those at Kew, a point of great 

 value for future reference, had involved many weeks' labour 

 for Professor Oliver at a time when he was overburdened with 

 work owing to the death of Sir William and the illness of Dr. 

 Hooker. 



With the return of T. Thomson from India in May 1861, 

 there was a renewed prospect of finishing off the arrangement 

 of the Indian materials and publishing a complete Flora Indica. 



As regards the former, the work was greatly prolonged. Dr. 

 Thomson himself was broken in health, and though after paying 

 another visit to India, forbidden by his doctor, he left Keigate 

 and definitely settled at Kew in 1863, progress was slow. When 

 the distribution of the existing Indian collections was finished, 

 Dr. Wight's Herbarium of Peninsular India also came to 

 Kew, for distribution, so that the catalogues and material pre- 

 liminary to the main enterprise were not finally ready till 1870. 

 The first part of Vol. I. appeared in 1872. 



As to the form the Indian Flora was now to take, it was 

 that of the Colonial Floras which were being put in hand by 

 the local Governments. 



I * Thus the matter is broached in a letter to Anderson, August 

 18, 1861 : 



